PROVIDENCE — Only weeks after it came to light, the state’s role as landlord of a strip club looks like it is coming to an end.

A somewhat obscure state committee yesterday cleared the way for the Department of Transportation to sell the building known as One Franklin Square, which it acquired in 2000 as a staging area for the interstate highway construction off Allens Avenue, and seek new quarters for the DOT employees who work there, one flight up from the strip club known as Club Desire.

Owned by Gerard C. DiSanto, a onetime candidate for the state Senate who was convicted by a federal jury in 1995 of attempting to burn down one of his restaurants, in Westport, Mass., the Providence strip club offers food and drinks from noon to 1 a.m., “lap dances,” “private booth dances” and what it calls a “full-nude room,” according to its Web site.

But yesterday’s discussion about unloading the now-famous building was pretty cut and dried.

The DOT is on an aggressive campaign to sell properties such as this that were acquired by eminent domain for one reason or another — but are no longer needed — so the financially struggling agency can provide a state match to the federal funds available for a long list of road, highway and bridge projects.

New state transportation Director Jerome F. Williams — and his predecessor, James Capaldi — have described the three-story building housing the strip club as surplus to state needs.

Two DOT officials went before the State Properties Committee yesterday seeking permission to solicit bids for the building that the state acquired for $1.9 million, and then, as state law requires, offer the previous owner — an arm of the Paolino real estate empire known as 57 Associates — first dibs at buying the building back by matching the best price offered for it.

The Paolino company — owned by the father of former Providence Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr. — has already ceded its right of first refusal to the club owner as part of a settlement of a separate legal dispute.

Last month, a private company hired by the DOT to appraise the building, the Newport Appraisal Group, assessed the building’s value at $2.3 million. If the agency’s staff agrees, that will be reflected in the public real estate offering as the minimum bid allowed.

The properties committee, meanwhile, gave the DOT permission to begin a search for new quarters for 23 of the 37 state workers stationed at the building.

A memo from Williams to the committee chairman, state planner Kevin Flynn, said 14 of the workers, from the survey section, will be relocated to the RIDOT maintainance facility in Warwick, but the 23 others are attached to the construction division and are still needed “in close proximity” to the Route 195 relocation project to oversee the work.

The properties committee gave the DOT permission to scout for state-owned property in the vicinity that might accommodate the workers and, if there is none, to contact local real estate agents and negotiate on an expedited basis the leasing of 4,500 square feet of office space for a minimum of four years with a potential two-year extension. The goal: to move the workers out within 60 to 90 days.

As it stands, the club is supposed to pay the state $7,000 in monthly rent. But the rent was waived for at least 10 months, between April 2005 and January 2006, under an unbid and unadvertised arrangement in which the DOT agreed to repay the club for a reported $95,000 worth of fire-code renovations that were made to the building by contractors hired by the club’s owner. The DOT has thus far been able to document only some of the expenses.

Williams yesterday would not rule out keeping the highway construction overseers where they are, but said again — as he did soon after the state’s relationship with the strip club came to light — “My preference is not to have them in that facility.”

kgregg@projo.com